Enablers

Let's assume for a minute that the new Mitt Romney, the one that debated Barack Obama last week, is the real Mitt Romney; or, at least, a version he'd stick with as president for long enough to be meaningful. You know, before his billionaire bankrollers call him on the carpet and tell him to stop all this reasonable regulatory stuff, this support for education and sudden willingness to hire teachers, this getting rid of (as yet unspecified but probably not Cayman-Island-related) tax loopholes. Let's assume, based on his sudden and complete metamorphosis, he'd be nearly as middle of the road as Barack Obama has been, will reach across the aisle as Obama tried, but would find Democrats reaching back as they always have and as today's Rs haven't and never will as long as it's the black guy in the white house.

Let's assume all that. We might as well assume that the earth will start rotating backwards, but let's anyway. I'd still never vote for the guy, and not just because of his lying about himself and his opponent and saying whatever he thought his audience of the moment wanted to hear, no matter how it contradicted his last utterances. It's because of today's Republican party, the party of teabaggerism, the party of denialism, of Christianism (amazing link!) and theocracy. The party that hates science (the speaker  in that link is on the House science committee, ferchissakes!, and to my shame is an MD), wants to convert public education into Sunday school. Elects people that like slavery, who believe Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Nazi America-hater. Louie Gohmert, Virginia Foxx, Allen West, Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and dozens of back benchers who probably believe even worse things but haven't figured out how to get the attention.

I don't care what Mitt Romney believes (which is convenient, because he obviously believes nothing.) His party elects idiots and zealots and crazy people. To vote for anyone who proudly calls him- or herself a Republican today, who hasn't in some way repudiated these nutjobs in Congress, is to enable them. It's to cede our future path to people like that, tacitly or otherwise; because if they were to get their way -- and Mitt Romney is nothing if not an amoral panderer to whomever he sees as momentarily useful -- we'll be on our way to becoming (we're already on our way: it's just a question of whether we get there) a perverted version of a Christian nation where expertise is rejected out of hand, science is considered the work of the devil, where money is sequestered in the hands of a powerful few whose only interest is in the maintenance of that wealth to the exclusion of all else; where education is ignored, health care is unaffordable by most, and college is reserved for the wealthy and the connected. Where women are forced to bring unwanted embryos to term but the babies are abandoned and ignored by society, sexual preference is a matter of law, and non-natives of any color are unwelcome under any circumstances.

There's no mystery about it, nor are the preceding claims unfounded: it's evident in everything those people say. I've actually voted for Republicans in the past; there's one running for governor of my state whose election I wouldn't consider a total disaster. (Partial. Not total.) But until the Republican party rids itself of those hate-filled and proudly ignorant troglodytes, there's no way I could vote for any member of that party at any level of government. I like living here too much, am too committed to seeing this country survive as a functioning entity, one that holds a future for my kid and, if it happens, his, too.

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Pissing Into The Wind

Here's a waste of time and energy:

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

If presentation of and interest in facts made a difference to the deniers, it wouldn't even be necessary. The evidence is there. It's a little, what shall we call it, inconvenient, though. Doesn't fit the narrative. Like pretty much everything else congressional and teabagger conservatives believe.

So, nice try guys. But you're wasting breath and adding see oh two to no good end.

Obvious

If one party continually tries to get people to vote, and the other regularly tries to suppress it, which is the more consistent with democracy?

Let's just admit it: these are terrible people.

"You liberial scumbags should be hung by the neck in public ! We are on to your voter fraud. Keep it up you MOTHER FUCKERS and you will soon be put down for a long dirt nap! Your nothing but a bunch of white guilt ridden assholes, NIGGERS and greasy mexican spics! The WAR is comming and we are going to dispose of each and every one of you while we take OUR (White) nation back."

Juiced up after their take-down of ACORN over non-existent fraud (except for that committed against ACORN by its own workers and reported to election monitors by ACORN), they're back to form, making accusations of fraud toward anyone trying to register voters.

As is regularly the case, the casting of actual fraudulent votes remains a vanishingly small problem; yet the suggestion thereof can be counted on to rally the most desperate among us.

Meanwhile, Rs are no longer even trying to hide their formerly covert efforts to trick minorities into not voting.

It's consistent, though. What's really going on in all this "take our country back" weeping and wailing is the fact, as I've said before, that teabaggers and other right-wingers don't actually believe in democracy. What they believe in is their supremacy. They're okay with voting as long as it's those that share their beliefs. (And by beliefs, I mean the things they cling to, no matter the facts. Pretty much everything they stand for, in other words.)

And so it is that, of a piece with the above illiterate efflux, we get stuff like this:

Stephen Broden, a Republican running for Congress in Texas' 30th District, said he would not rule out a violent overthrow of the government if the midterm elections don't cause a change in government, saying that "our nation was founded on violence" so "the option is on the table."

According to the Dallas Morning News, Broden said in a TV interview yesterday: "We have a constitutional remedy here and the Framers says if that don't work, revolution."

"If the government is not producing the results or has become destructive to the ends of our liberties, we have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary," he continued.

Happily, the local Rs disavowed the rhetoric. But is it far outside the teabagging mentality?

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck says he doesn't believe the guy said it.

It's on tape.

Glenn Beck doesn't believe he said it.

Okay, fine: he said if the guy said it, he'd denounce it. Kudos.

But it's already on tape. IT'S ON TAPE.

What's not to believe?

Global warming (he exhales, says that's CO2, so what's the problem?), evolution (he says he's never seen a half-man/half-monkey), the stimulus worked: THEY'RE ON TAPE!!!!!

Take bag, dip. Don't like facts? Dip again.

Genius

My aunt, who, among other things, was a gifted musician, told me that when she was a little girl she liked to read classical piano sheet music at bedtime, and when she woke up she could play it all, from memory.

I was talking with my nephew this weekend about the wonders of the human brain. He'd seen a piece about an autistic savant who could hear the most complex jazz music once, and play it back perfectly. I like thinking about that.

The other night, I heard a lecture by Jonathan Franzen, who is, in my opinion, an exceptionally gifted writer. He is also, by some accounts, a bit of an asshole whose social skills don't match those of his wordsmanship. (In fact, he'd obviously devoted a lot of thought to the lecture, and was almost painfully honest and self-revelatory; he took questions, pausing and thinking hard before giving very personal and nuanced answers. Answers that respected the questions. He was entertaining, thought-provoking, and charming. The LA Times recently ran a very snarky opinion column about him. The careful reader of it might find a familiar in the comment thread.)

Is genius a disorder? In the conversation with my nephew, we discussed the fact that in the same piece he'd seen, a mathematical savant was also featured. Studies of his brain in action, while mathturbating, showed he was using parts of it for calculation that other people typically devote to physical dexterity. It's as if genius is some sort of anatomic accident. Maybe individuals with exceptional gifts, whether they be of music, math, writing, painting -- even, perhaps, of legislating wisely -- are like people with Asberger's. Maybe to be really gifted you must have a brain whose wiring devotes more of itself to your gifts than to, say, being nice. It's said of many of the greats that they were hard to live with.

When I read really good writing, view a particularly resonant painting, hear great jazz, it adds enjoyment to know something about the artist; I like having some context. Simply, it's interesting. But it doesn't affect my pleasure in experiencing the art if I discover the artist was a jerk. From observation, in fact, it seems genius has a high correlation with some sort of personal dysfunction. We need genius, so who cares?

Seen another way, it's being "normal" that is a disability. Normal is nice, of course, but we can't get along if all we have is normal people. Being charitable to them, teabaggers are normal. Normal people can draw pictures, play happy birthday on the piano, write sentences that fit on signs (and they're certainly not gifted at spelling). Normal people like Thomas Kinkade. They can start with a world-view and sift data to fit it. They can make their own reality. Genii can't. They see the world, the reality of it, they can't help it. And although that sort of clarity of vision tends to drive them crazy (or maybe it's the other way around), it fuels them. Seeing and knowing, they create, they stimulate, they add to our understanding of the world, even as they rob us of comfort. Without such people, we stagnate, we are blind, we fail to learn new things, to find cures, to recognize each other. The price to the seers, or maybe the entry fee, is to live in pain, to not fit in easily.

There's the reality of Sarah Palin and what's-her-name O'Donnell, in which the earth is six thousand years old, Barack Obama is a terrorist, tax cuts pay for themselves and your next car, we'll have roads and health care and limitless energy in a climate-stable world without changing a thing, same-sex marriage will end it for everyone else, and God will take care of us. In this reality, everything is simple and easy; it contains no self-doubts, no existential angst, it's black and white, there is no discordance, only certainty. All truth is in a single book, all solutions fit on placards. In their reality, there's no place, no need, for genius.

And then there's reality.

An Entire Party...

Sure, there'll always be kooks and cranks. But a whole party?

Of the Republicans running for the thirty-seven Senate seats -- and that means a lot more than thirty-seven people, because we still gots primaries going on -- only one, ONE!!!, seems to accept the idea of anthropogenic climate change. And he just lost. To someone who campaigns against masturbation. On biblical grounds.

Now, I don't doubt there are a few Republicans who accept the concept of science: heck, even McMaverick used to, and Lindsey Graham, before they stuck their fingers into the jasmine wind. But it doesn't matter. If they exist, they're voiceless.

What matters is that the only people who can be elected by that party nowadays are the crazy ones, or the stupid, or (to put the best face on it) the shameless panderers. This is the party about to retake power. It bodes ill.

You don't get to select which science to accept. You can't take antibiotics for infections while denying the science behind climate change. Scientific method is scientific method. If you don't buy it, fine. But how can you get on an airplane if that's how you think? Surely you'd never trust GPS, or lie under my now-sheathed knife. If science doesn't work, neither do nuclear power plants, or moon shots. Deniers should live in caves. And why not? That's where they'll find their heads.

I don't know climate science by personal investigation; but I do know science as a discipline. It would be the mother of all conspiracies if, as so many on the right say, all the scientists in all the countries around all the world have colluded -- rejecting, one would also assume, a few billion dollars in incentives from oil and coal companies -- to falsify data. (The email debacle notwithstanding: it was, to the surprise of none but the Foxobeckians, a molehill.*) To what end, one must ask, would the conspiracy exist? Is it that scientists, because of their intelligence and curiosity, must all be liberals and, therefore, communists who hate capitalism? One can only wonder.

In what world does an entire party plant its flag firmly in anti-science denialism? How did science become a partisan issue, anyway? It's kind of digital, really. Ones and zeroes. Where's the politics in that? (Okay, I guess that's obvious: the liberal/conservative brain thing, once again. And, of course, the extent to which science threatens biblical literalism.)

Well, that's the way it is. We have a party with its collective head in a cave, factophobic, its mantra "I got mine, I'm keeping it, screw you." Or, at best, "Glenn said it, I believe it, that settles it." And they're winning the argument.

Simply amazing.

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*Truth be told, at my place molehills are a big deal. But that's another story. And I can now, scientifically, recommend those worm-shaped bait thingies.

Epoch Fail

If there's anyone left to write it, history will show that the greatest crime committed by Fox "news", the RWS™, congressional Republicans, and the teabaggers who make them possible, is their climate change denial. With it, they have sealed the fate of our country, and of our planet. It's entirely at their feet. That the senate has abandoned attempts to craft meaningful legislation when the evidence is as clear as it is simply reflects the effects of the aforementioned idiocy. And it makes clear that our system of government is no longer capable of governing, and that the people it serves -- and who elected them -- have not enough collective wisdom to overcome being dragged down. It was a nice country, it was a nice planet, while it lasted.

What does it say about us when the formerly backward China gets it and we don't? What can be more dispiriting than this failure, given the evidence? It's as if a family decided not to leave its burning house because their favorite show was on. Or because someone told them that's not smoke anyway, that fear of flames is just a liberal plot to... to.... uh... something something.

See, the problem is that doing something would require people to think beyond their own personal gratification; and ever since Ronald Reagan they've been told they don't need to. Republicans give lip service to the idea of patriotism and sacrifice for the country they claim to love; but actually to save it, if doing so would require paying a little more in taxes, using a little less oil, thinking long-term, abandoning preferred (meaning "easy") beliefs to face facts, well, forget it. George Bush, after all, told us at the one moment we were together and maybe even shocked into willingness to do the hard stuff, that all we needed to do was go shopping. Go to Disneyland. And, of course, to pay less in taxes. That's when the idea of sacrifice, on life support since Ronald Reagan kissed Bonzo goodbye and placed his hand on the Bible, officially died.

I do understand, of course, that when a party has nothing to offer, tearing down the people with ideas is its only option. But it has always escaped me why certain things -- factual things -- should split along party lines. Climate change, evolution, age of the earth: shouldn't it just be, well, human, to be able to assimilate data, and not political? Evidently not, when one party deliberately and necessarily selects for uncritical thinkers. Non-thinkers. And praises them for it, while laughing at smart people.

How hard is the basic concept? Stop using fossil fuels. Or, to put it another way: STOP USING FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!

Yeah, well, actuation ain't as easy. But you don't even have to believe in anthropogenic climate change to see the need. 1) Sooner or later we'll run out of the stuff (unless you're among the lunatics who believe in abiogenic oil); 2) The faster we get off our need for imported oil, the safer we'll be; 3) NO ONE denies the effects of air pollution on our lungs (do they?), which, after all, are attached to our bodies even if we can't see them. So, you'd think, even as there is legitimate disagreement on how it should happen, everyone should be down with the idea that we have to get there. But no.

What kills me (all of us, actually) is the fact that our failure to do the right thing stems, as usual, not from having had a thorough debate and intelligent discussion of the issue and its solutions. It's because of stupid Senate rules and the way they allow complete idiots like James Inhofe to prevail. And it's because an entire network full of goons and morons legitimizes the idiocy in the eyes of the public. One can only imagine to what end.

I wish I'd live long enough to see those destructors live long enough to realize how wrong they were and how they killed our planet. On the other hand, these are clearly not people who'd ever muster that sort of introspection, extrovision, or self-criticism. But, corporatists that they are, they'll die after me, because they'll be the last to afford thousand dollar a gallon gas, the last to be able to pay for air conditioning, and a grand or two for a hamburger. The last to see what they did, even as they deny it.

One can hope.

Better Said

Above is an appropriate followup to my "Science Speaks" post. Much better than I have or could, it demonstrates the deliberate falsification (or, at best, the credulous ignorance) of the deniers. I particularly like the part in which Fox "news" trumpets the retraction of an article about predicted rise of the ocean, while ignoring the fact that it was retracted because the authors were convinced they'd underestimated the rise. The most-watched cable network. Deliberate liars.

The final minute or so of the video is especially resonant to me: the hatred of science fomented in our society will be our ruin.

Hot Topic

With so much crazy out there, so much from which to choose, I haven't commented lately on global warming denialism. But there's a thought I've had for a long time and just haven't gotten around to mentioning. So here it is. In honor of Earth Day, which I missed.

A favorite tactic among the supercilious is reminding us that a mere forty years ago, there were scientists sounding alarms over the prospect of global cooling. To which I have two things to say in response. First, the obvious: that's what science does. It corrects itself. By definition. Science differs from, say, entrenched reticence, religious fundamentalism, or reflexive rejection of whatever you don't like, in that it challenges the known; tests it; refines it; seeks falsehood and replaces it with something closer to truth. Continually.

Next, my little insight. The argument defeats itself!! If, based on geologic trends over previous eons, we were predicted to be heading into a cooling phase, and if, within a mere four decades that trend has entirely reversed, doesn't it suggest something pretty serious and non-geological (for lack of a better term) is happening? Isn't it pretty apparent that NOTHING but human activity could account for such rapid change? A half-century! A semi-demi-hemi-nanosecond in geologic time.

Or, to put in another way, it's like calling off the fire department as your house burns, because yesterday a guest told you it was cold inside.

Paradigms

In college a friend had a motorcycle which I rode through the Berkshire mountains a few times, having a blast. The machine was strong but quiet; I didn't need to spew sound at the sunset to feel good. Near our house there's a long steep grade. Riders on Harleys flog their hogs up the hill, rattling windows for miles. Why, I wonder?

Approaching our home there's a two-lane road that merges into one. I move over early. Always there are people racing up the right side, forcing their way in a few cars ahead, cutting ten seconds off their commute, avoiding eye contact.

Can there be anyone -- especially people able to afford road tanks -- who doesn't understand the critical relation between oil imports and security? And yet there are people driving around in Hummers; alone, usually. And a Republican Senator, in response to President Obama's demands to increase gas mileage, said people have a right to drive a gas guzzler if they want to.

Really? Now?

The time has come for a paradigm shift. For some, thinking about the other guy, not using more than your share, seeing yourself as part of something more than yourself has been a way of life. For others it never has and, sadly, probably never will. But here we are: we're running out of oil, polluting our planet, ignoring our bridges and dams, straining our grids, shortchanging education; and still, for some, it's every man for himself. All for one, and one for one. Muffle my bike? Hell no. Settle for an equal portion of the road? What if I don't want to? Think about collective needs, planetary good, plan for the future? Consider others? Sacrifice a little? For better mileage? Help pay for the future? What am I, some sort of liberal?

In college I drove my V-8 Mustang on gas that cost twenty-five cents a gallon, except when there were price wars between stations, and then it was nineteen. Fuel economy mattered not to me, not to anyone; nor did the source of the fuel. Before I had the car (senior year only) I hitchhiked all over the East Coast, fearlessly. Now if I did, I figure my thumb might be the only thing they'd find of me.

I think a lot of the denialism of the RWS™ and of people like several who comment here, is as simple as unwillingness to face unhappy facts. (And, as I've written and as we see in those comments, conservatives, when presented with facts that disprove their beliefs tend to believe even harder.) They'll take the opinion of a right-wing British commentator about whom they presumably know nothing, and, of course, of people like O'Reilly and Hannity and Beck, whose statements are disproved within hours of utterance, while happily and insistently denying and ignoring expert and factual commentary, no matter how clear. (The LA plot WAS discovered before KSM was tortured. Torture DID force falsehoods which were used to justify invading Iraq. Carbon dioxide CAN be dangerous even though we exhale it. A mere four years ago, Republicans DID say judicial nominees shouldn't be filibustered...)

And who can blame them? How much simpler it was back then; how nice to fill my tank for three bucks, which I could make in an hour of washing dishes in Valentine Hall. For if you accept global warming, or the oil/security nexus, or that unfettered free-markets no longer work these days, you must also accept certain responsibilities, internalize connection to your fellow man, your planet. Accept rules of behavior and laws of the land. Be willing to pay more in taxes (but less for health care.) How depressing is that? Our mythology says we were built on rugged individualism. Can't wishing and ignoring (and lying) bring it all back?

It's toxic, when the stakes are so high. And, most clearly, when backed against a wall, the urge to deny is even stronger. Facts fall by the wayside like litter from an SUV.

In what way does a person on quiet bike differ from one on a Harley? Is raising the middle finger really more satisfying than raising consciousness? What does the one who drives a Hummer lack that can only be fulfilled by consuming gallons of gas and taking up two spaces? (For the record, I'd be embarrassed to drive one, yet my penis is no more than average size.) Consumption at the rate we now employ it is unsustainable. Taking without paying for it, as in the Bush tax cuts, is too. It's past time for the paradigm shift. What I do affects you; what you don't do affects me. It might not have been true a few decades ago. It is now. We're stuck with each other.

Problem is, some made the shift long ago, or were there in the first place; and the ones who haven't by now probably never will. Like Tom Coburn, and the beloved anonymi who troll these waters, they want their metaphorical gas hogs. They want to do whatever they please, whenever and wherever; and screw you for saying otherwise and don't bother me with facts.

There seems, quite literally, no way to convince them. Ironically, what they're implicitly counting on is that the rest of us will do what they're unwilling to do. They need us; and we can do without them. Funny.
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For The Record

I'll be waiting to hear from those who continue to argue that our president is mistaken in closing Gitmo and in ending torture. Because now their military hero (and with that I'd agree) David Petraeus has said it's the right thing to do. So, previously, has the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The deniers have kissed off calls for ending torture when they come from professional interrogators who served in Iraq: after all, how could such a person know what he's talking about. If Dick Cheney dismisses the argument that torture was a recruitment tool, then surely a guy who saw the evidence of it daily must be a liar. How, one wonders, will they reject the Commander of Centcom?

More and more clearly, the policies of torture and detention under Cheney/Bush are revealed as devastating mistakes, rising nearly to the level of devastation of the invasion of Iraq itself. Near the top among the reasons I keep harping on it is that the defense of those policies is a perfect microcosm of our politics in general, and that of the current Republican party in particular. The facts are there, indisputable. The people who are the most expert are virtually unanimous. And yet, for reasons beyond comprehension, some on the right wing of the right wing refuse to accept it.

It's not as if we're arguing something abstract, like hating or loving the Yankees (although in that, my position is absolutely correct). Once again, we see the problem for our political future: some people -- most of them conservatives -- are fundamentally unable to deal with facts that disprove a desired belief. And although only about twenty percent of people now identify themselves as Republicans, they represent forty percent of the US Senate.

To me it seems hopeless. If people who are refractory to factual arguments have a veto over those that aren't, how can we hope for progress on anything? Societies contain people of all sorts. Good or bad, that's the way it is. I can hurry by or engage the guy on the street corner ranting and handing out leaflets. Local color. Not an issue one way or the other. But when our political system appears now to have been rigged to see to it that those people are elected to Congress, there's real cause for real alarm. When the only ones remaining who favor continuing detention at Guantanamo and the use of torture are those who ignore all the data and the professionals, it says something.

And what is says, for the billionth time, is that we're screwed.
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